Christmas in India

How India celebrates Christmas

India's 2011 Census counted 27,819,588 Christians, about 2.3% of the population. They belong to some of the oldest churches in the world, including the Syrian Christian communities of Kerala, who trace their faith to St Thomas the Apostle, as well as Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox churches founded in the colonial era and since. Christmas is the most important festival of the Christian year in India, and 25 December is listed among the closed holidays for central government offices nationwide, so government offices and most businesses close for the day.

Christmas also reaches far beyond the churches. In north and north-west India it is known as Bada Din, "the Big Day", and in Kolkata as Boro Din. Shopping malls and markets put up trees and lights, bakeries are busy with plum cake, and many non-Christian families exchange cakes and greetings. Christian homes set up a crib, the nativity scene, often with clay figures, and hang a lit star outside to stand for the Star of Bethlehem. Where fir trees are not available, a Christmas tree may be an artificial pine or a branch of a local tree, and some families decorate their homes with banana or mango leaves and small oil lamps.

Midnight Mass, carols and cribs

For Indian Christians, especially Catholics, the high point is midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Churches are lit with strings of lights and stars, and services are held in English and in regional languages, such as Konkani in Goa and Malayalam in Kerala. Many families wear new clothes for the occasion, and a festive meal follows on Christmas Day.

In the days before Christmas, carol groups from parishes and youth associations go from house to house after dark, singing in English and local languages. Households welcome them with refreshments. Parishes and neighbourhoods also take pride in building large cribs, some with moving water, lights and whole miniature villages.

Christmas in Goa

Goa's Christmas, Natal, carries centuries of Portuguese and Catholic tradition. The central service is the Missa de Galo, the "rooster's Mass" held at midnight on Christmas Eve, usually in Konkani with hymns sung by local choirs. Visitors often attend at the Basilica of Bom Jesus or the Se Cathedral in Old Goa. Afterwards families return home to share sweets and spend the night together.

Homes build elaborate cribs from clay figurines, coconut fibre and moss, and in villages such as Benaulim and Varca in South Goa neighbours visit one another to see them. Large paper-and-bamboo stars, lit from within, hang from balconies, and many villages hold informal competitions for the best. In the weeks before Christmas, women of the family prepare the kuswar, the Konkani name for the platter of homemade Christmas sweets that is sent to neighbours, relatives, friends and colleagues as a Christmas greeting. Panaji and Mapusa hold Christmas markets, and the beaches of the north coast are crowded with visitors until New Year.

Christmas in Kerala

Kerala has more than six million Christians, one of the largest Christian communities in India. Many Syro-Malabar Catholics keep the 25 Nombu, a 25-day fast from 1 December, giving up meat and alcohol, and sometimes dairy, until the midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. In some churches the Mass begins outdoors at the crib, and the figure of the Infant Jesus is carried inside in procession.

A lit paper star in front of a house was once a sign that the family was Christian; today it is common to see one outside homes of all faiths across the state, especially in towns such as Kottayam and Pala. Carol groups visit homes after sunset, and Father Christmas is called Christmas Appooppan or Pappani. The Christmas feast typically includes appam with stew, duck roast, fish dishes, homemade grape wine and plum cake.

India's first Christmas cake

Kerala is credited with India's first Christmas cake. On 20 December 1883, in Thalassery (then Tellicherry), the baker Mambally Bapu of Mambally's Royal Biscuit Factory, founded in 1880, baked a cake for the British planter Murdoch Brown, who had brought a sample from England. Brown is said to have declared it "excellent" and ordered a dozen more.

Kolkata and Mumbai

Kolkata: Boro Din on Park Street

Kolkata has kept the Christmas traditions of its British and Anglo-Indian past. Park Street is strung with lights through the season, and since 2011 the West Bengal government has held a Christmas festival in the area, running until New Year's Day, while nearby Allen Park fills with Christmas installations, cribs and food stalls. Crowds fill the streets on Christmas Eve, and St Paul's Cathedral, a Gothic Revival building dating from 1847, is the city's most popular church at Christmas and is illuminated for its midnight Mass.

Plum cake is the city's Christmas essential. Queues form at the Park Street tearoom Flurys, founded in 1927, and at Nahoum & Sons, the Jewish bakery founded in 1902 by Israel Mordecai, a Baghdadi Jew. In Bow Barracks, red-brick former military barracks long home to Anglo-Indian families, residents decorate the lanes with stars and lights and sell homemade cakes and wine. Anglo-Indian families across India bake Christmas cake together, fry kalkals and rose cookies and make coconut sweets and marzipan in the fortnight before Christmas.

Mumbai

Mumbai's Christmas draws on the traditions of its Goan, Mangalorean and East Indian Catholic communities. Midnight Mass is held at Mount Mary Basilica in Bandra, St Thomas Cathedral and many parish churches, and the streets of Bandra, especially Hill Road, and Colaba are lit up. Kulkuls and plum cakes are the city's Christmas treats.

Christmas in the Northeast

Three states of India have Christian majorities. In the 2011 Census, Christians made up 87.93% of the population of Nagaland, 87.16% of Mizoram and 74.59% of Meghalaya, and Christmas is the biggest festival of the year in all three. Nagaland, where Baptists are by far the largest church, has often been described as the only predominantly Baptist state in the world.

Christmas in the Northeast is a homecoming and a community occasion. In Nagaland, churches usually host a community feast, and each tribe brings its own dishes, from the Sumi's axone (fermented soybean) to the Lotha's pork with bamboo shoot. The season opens with the Hornbill Festival, held every year from 1 to 10 December at Kisama Heritage Village near Kohima since 2000, which showcases the culture of the Naga tribes. In Mizoram, the festive mood begins around 1 December, guitar-led carol groups sing Mizo Christmas songs (Krismas lenkhawm) from house to house, and community feasts of rice, meat and vegetables are served on wild plantain leaves. In Shillong, Meghalaya's capital, choirs and concerts fill the evenings in the week before Christmas, and midnight Mass at the cathedral draws thousands.

Christmas around India

Traditional Indian Christmas food

There is no single Indian Christmas dinner. Every community has its own feast, from Kerala's appam and stew to Goa's sorpotel and the pork dishes of Nagaland, but almost everywhere the season means plum cake and trays of homemade sweets shared with neighbours.

New Year and the Three Kings

In India the Christmas season runs straight into New Year. Goa's beaches and Kolkata's Park Street stay busy with celebrations until 1 January. In Fort Kochi, Kerala, an effigy of Pappani, the Christmas old man, is burnt on the beach on New Year's Eve. Greetings now travel mostly by phone, and many Indians share Happy New Year 2027 cards for WhatsApp, status images and ready-to-send wishes with family and friends at midnight.

The season ends with Epiphany. In Goa, the Feast of the Three Kings is held on 6 January or the first Sunday of January in three villages: Reis Magos (Verem), Cansaulim, where the feast is held at a hilltop chapel on Cuelim hill, and Chandor. Three young villagers, dressed as the Magi in crowns and robes, lead a procession, in some villages on horseback.

Indian Christmas season dates 2026

The Allen Park festival in Kolkata usually runs in the days around Christmas and into the New Year; dates are announced each December.

Christmas in India: frequently asked questions

Christmas in nearby countries